Suchergebnisse

Industry and mainstream research and policy institutions often suggest that transgenic crop varieties can raise the productivity of poor third world farmers, feed the hungry, and reduce poverty. These claims are critically evaluated by examining global-hunger data, the constraints that affect the productivity of small farmers in the third world, and the factors that explain their poverty. No significant role is found for crop genetics in determining hunger, productivity, or poverty, casting doubt on the ability of new transgenic crop varieties produced by genetic engineering to address these problems. An examination of the special risks these varieties pose for poor farmers in the complex, diverse, and risk-prone environments that characterize peasant agriculture on a global scale suggests that transgenic crop varieties are likely to be more of hindrance than a help to the advancement of poor farmers.

While it is obvious that the dominant political-corporate power & vested interests are the largest obstacles to overcoming major problems with the current agribusiness system, the psychological barrier to believing that other systems could work is also a block to change. Cuba has faced a food crisis & through the use of sustainable farming methods has overcome it. It has demonstrated that self-reliance, small farms, & agroecological technology can produce the amount of food the nation needed. After the 1959 revolution, Cuba had a favorable trading status with the Soviet bloc. While three times the amount of land was devoted to sugar production for export, Cuba imported about 57% of its food. With the fall of the USSR & the loss of a favorable trading situation, Cuba faced a food crisis. Substitutes for pesticides, such as biopesticides, natural enemies, resistant plant varieties, crop rotations, & cover cropping to suppress weeds, were adopted. Biofertilizers, earthworms, compost, & organic fertilizers, natural phosphate, & animal & green manures were used for synthetic fertilizers. Animals replaced the tractor. Since small farms adapted to these changes better than the state sector, it was reorganized into small-scale management units that relinked people with the land. Urban gardens were encouraged. By mid-1995 the food shortage had been eliminated & by the following year, Cuba had achieved its highest production for ten of the thirteen basic food items needed. L. A. Hoffman